Sunday, April 29, 2012

screen-free week

I've not been blogging much lately and since I've been helping to head up our school's campaign for National Screen-Free Week (which is part of what's been keeping me so busy) I thought I'd let you know that I won't be around for another week more. Because, of course, I'll be going screen free!

For those not familiar, tomorrow, April 30 through Sunday, May 6 is Screen-Free Week. This respite is hosted by The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, and since I've been writing so much about it elsewhere I don't feel inspired to write much more here. I'll therefore let the folks over at CCFC speak for themselves:

Screen-Free Week is a national celebration where children, families, schools, and communities spend seven days turning off entertainment screen media and turning on life. It’s a time to unplug and play, read, create, explore, enjoy nature and spend time with family and friends.

Screen-Free Week isn’t just about snubbing screens for seven days; it’s a springboard for important lifestyle changes that will improve well-being and quality of life all year round.

Time with screens is linked to poor school performance, childhood obesity, and attention problems. And it is primarily through screens that children are exposed to harmful marketing. Regardless of whether they are consuming “good” or “bad” programming, it’s clear that screen media dominates the lives of far too many children, displacing all sorts of other activities that are integral to childhood.

Screen-Free Week is a fun and innovative opportunity to improve children’s well-being by reducing dependence on entertainment screen media, including television, video games, computers, and hand-held devices. It’s a chance for children - and their parents - to examine their relationships with entertainment media and rediscover the joys of life beyond the screen.

While our daughter is almost entirely screen-free and Ryan and I only rarely watch a film in our home or out on date night, the challenge for us will be to reflect on the time we spend online and take a good look at how, when and where we utilize our smart phones especially in her presence. Also, as I have been of late anyhow, I'll be looking at what it means to be a blogger and how it affects the way we live our daily lives. Primarily this week is about "entertainment media". Is that what we're doing here? Should be some interesting contemplation, eh?

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